


To Mend What's Broken

by Lyndotia (Disenchantress)



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Split Perspective
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 09:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4619985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disenchantress/pseuds/Lyndotia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A chronological series of similarly-themed oneshots. Fenris knows he broke Hawke's heart, and Anders knows he can heal that; then the tables are turned in the climax of act III. Can a twice-broken Hawke ever be mended? Each chapter is split-perspective, half in the voice of one character and half in the other's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Broken Promises

"I can't imagine what Hawke sees in you."

"It is done. Leave it be."

"Good. I always knew she had some sense."

"Do not make light of this. Leaving was the hardest thing I've ever done."

* * *

I knew he would break her, no matter how hard I tried to make her see.

Fenris was a wild dog that only knew how to cause pain; that was literally what he had been made for. It was completely unbelievable that he would walk around with Miranda Hawke, the woman that had agreed to help him with Danarius and his men, telling her how mages like her deserved to be locked away or made tranquil.

It was almost as unbelievable that she just let him do it. She never seemed to spare the time to try to correct him, just gently went on her way as if he would see reason eventually, which would have made me angry if her decisions were just as indifferent. Thankfully, Hawke wasn't like the Kirkwall nobles that had been born into their positions. She was a mage and she knew the pain and persecution that came with that. Maker, she still memorized the faces of new templar recruits like she had in Ferelden!

She had won back the Amell estate, but that didn't seem to make any difference to her. As far as she was concerned, she was still just an apostate, and as far as I was concerned, she was one of the most intense and beautiful things in the entire city. At least, that's what I thought when I allowed myself to think of her. Those were things I considered only while lying on my cot in the dead of night after the clinic had emptied and left me alone with my thoughts - or as alone as my thoughts ever got, anyway.

Justice found Hawke to be an unnecessary distraction, but I thought her a very necessary one. She reminded me to be human, to joke and laugh and see beyond my own point of view. She soothed the parts of me that the bond with Justice had made feral.

Unfortunately, she also hurt me deeply on occasion. It felt like swallowing broken glass or going through another blighted Joining when I first saw the way she looked at that little hypocrite of an elf. He hated everything she was, but still she seemed convinced he could come to care for her anyway. As if he even knew what that meant.

I tried to talk to her about it in the Hanged Man one night, but she wouldn't hear a word against him. None of us were exactly saints, but she was entirely too good for someone like him. She was too good for someone like me, for that matter, but at least I wasn't soulless enough to condemn every mage in existence to tranquility or death while preaching about how slavery is wrong.

So I poured myself into my work and tried not to think about the lightning in her blue eyes when I had told her all I wanted was for her not to get hurt. I recommitted myself to the patients in my clinic. I reviewed and rewrote my manifesto a thousand times over. I started sneaking into the Gallows at night to better understand the cause I was fighting for, and every injustice just seemed to make me angrier.

And it was an injustice, I knew, for someone like Miranda Hawke to be dragged down by a beast as savage as Fenris. So I took it as a sign when he admitted one day that he had left her. I took it as another when she finally decided she had to talk to someone, and came to my clinic in Darktown to do it. And as her visits became more frequent and less sad, I had to start reminding myself again that I should resist her.

The problem was that I didn't want to. She was an incredible person, an incredible mage, and both my heart and my body ached for her. I didn't miss the irony that I was a healer, and this was the one thing I couldn't heal.

It took me some time to accept that I could be falling in love with her. After all, that was something I wasn't supposed to be capable of. Mages didn't love what they couldn't afford to lose.

Oddly enough, it was Hawke's stories about her own family that changed my mind. I had never met another mage that actually remembered their parents, let alone a father that had magic as well. The thought that Leandra Amell had loved a mage deeply enough to leave everything she had ever known, and he in return had loved her enough to flee the Circle and disappear with her, made me begin to wonder if perhaps love could still exist even for people like me.

Our first night together was, well, magic. I could have put together every daydream from the past three years and it still wouldn't have begun to compare. And as she fell asleep in my arms, I brushed the stray curls back from her face and hoped there was enough good left in me to heal the damage he had done.

* * *

"You were an idiot to leave Hawke."

"And you were fast enough to replace me."

"I love her. You can't even imagine what that is."

"Do not bare your heart to me, mage. Unless you would see me rip it out."

* * *

I knew I would break her, no matter how hard I tried not to.

At first, I assumed because Miranda Hawke was a mage, she would fall to blood magic and I would have no choice. Though I harbored no sympathy for blood mages, I owed the woman that had helped me destroy Danarius's men and I held no illusions to the contrary. That's why I stayed and tolerated the mages… at first.

Then she impressed me, and continued to do so. Sometimes she dallied too close to forgiveness for the ones that consorted with demons, but at the end of the day, she usually seemed to make the right choice. Well, except where the whining abomination was concerned.

But even that, I regrettably understood. He had saved her brother's life by leading them to the Grey Wardens. She owed Anders the same way I owed her, and though I certainly tried, I couldn't hold that against her.

So it was with a lot of uneasiness that I slowly began to trust a mage for the first time, and it frightened me just how often I found myself forgetting what she was. Normally calm and diplomatic, Hawke seemed to have a plan for every situation—and when that failed, the temper that matched her fiery hair assured victory anyway.

Being around her was like standing in the eye of a storm as it devoured my enemies: beautiful and powerful to watch, but I had to constantly remind myself that she could at any moment turn and destroy me, as well.

Not that I feared her magic any longer, after a time. Hawke had proven herself stronger than the rest, stronger even than I had been in the Fade. I had turned my back on her for a promise from a demon, not even considering the Dalish Keeper's warning: mages that died in the Fade awoke as tranquil. I do not know what I would have done had she not defeated me. If I had come back to find myself staring at a shell of Miranda Hawke that stared at me glassy-eyed and emotionless, that might have been the end of me anyway.

It was when I realized I trusted myself less than I trusted her that I knew I loved her. But I was unworthy; there was too much blood on my hands, and so I kept them to myself. I promised that I would never bring more pain upon her than I had already. I promised that I would not break her as I did everything else with these damned lyrium-etched hands.

But Hawke tempted me in a way I had never known, perhaps without even realizing, and I was too angry and too weak to resist. She had kept me alive in those holding caves and I repaid her by declaring all things touched by magic as spoiled. When I went to her house that night, it was to tell her that had been a lie, that she was perfection unspoiled by magic or anything else and I was the one it had twisted into something inhuman.

Then she had appeared in little more than a dressing robe and seemed to barely even hear my apology through her concern. I tried to leave, tried to run away before I slipped and hurt her. But when she grabbed my arm, I responded as I had learned to do when touched by a mage: the lyrium in my skin glowed and I slammed her back against the wall before the surprise in her eyes shocked me back to myself.

I would have disappeared then and there if she hadn't kissed me. It was too much to bear, having her hold me to her so close that I could feel every beat of her heart and every curve of her flesh. I knew if I kissed her in return it would be too late to turn back, but by the time my mind began to object, my body had already responded.

For one moment, one night, Miranda Hawke was mine and it was more incredible than anything I had ever dreamed. But our… activities had triggered something else, as well. The memories that had been burned away by the heat of the lyrium returned in flashes, things I couldn't understand and things I would never have wanted to remember. And so I fled like the coward I was, breaking every vow I had ever made and hating myself all the more for it.

When I regained my composure, I wanted to apologize, but it was far too late for that and I knew it. It was a while longer before she knew it too, but when I saw her smiling bashfully at the abomination, I knew she had finally understood.

Sometimes, I still feel the heat of her skin and the brush of her lips. Sometimes, I still dream that I hadn't been such a fool that night and realized earlier how hollow it is to live free without her. Sometimes, I think of disposing of the mage before he hurts her and imagine her crying into my shoulder and eventually, slowly becoming mine once more. But I could never do that to her. He is mending the parts of her that I hurt, and I could never break her again.

And he had best pray to his Maker that he doesn't either.

* * *

"You are… living with Hawke now?"

"What's it to you?"

"… Be good to her. Break her heart, and I will kill you."


	2. Broken Faith

When Hawke defended me to Danarius and my former master finally died at my hand, I thought it was over. All those long years of running and hiding had led to this, and I could finally be free.

I admit, I might have felt less free had I gone through with killing Varania. Hawke had remembered what I had told her that night, that my hatred was a poison I couldn't control, and used my own words against me to stay my hand. At the time, it had only made me angry at her as well.

But I was immeasurably glad that so much time spent in the possessed mage's company hadn't corrupted Miranda Hawke as it would have lesser mages. When Danarius appeared, a small part of me had been frightened she might return me to him as punishment for what I had done to her.

The voice of self-loathing in my head probably would have agreed I deserved it if she had.

Yet as I returned to my decaying mansion to, as Varric so eloquently put it, "brood," it wasn't Danarius's death or Varania's betrayal that weighed upon my mind.

* * *

"And this is your new master, then? The Champion of Kirkwall? Impressive."

"Fenris doesn't _belong_ to anyone!"

"Do I detect a note of jealousy? It's not surprising… the lad is rather _skilled_ , isn't he?"

* * *

I woke snarling the words again - "Shut your mouth, Danarius!" - as if he was still in the room. The bedsheets had my sword arm pinned or I would likely have already been reaching for the blade at my bedside.

It was a moment before I remembered Danarius was dead and his words with him. I tried to quiet the part of me that was still afraid of what he might have said next, yet still it haunted me to imagine him speaking aloud the things he had done to me… in front of her.

I had never told Hawke of the depths of depravity to which Danarius had sunk to break me, and continued to relish in simply because he could. Part of me denied that it was any longer of consequence. Part of me wanted to forget it altogether. Part of me just didn't want her to think even less of me than she likely already did.

And Varania's revelation before she ran away only made it worse. I had not been forced to receive these markings as I had always believed. I had fought for them, submitted myself to that use and humiliation and torture to free her and in return, she had tried to sell me back to my tormenter. For magic - always magic.

She would have succeeded if it weren't for Hawke, I was certain. And, I grudgingly admitted, if not also for Isabela and the possessed mage, though he hadn't exactly seemed happy to defend me after Danarius's remark about jealousy.

I had tried to stop hating him so, for her sake. I had tried with every fiber of my being, but it was like trying not to hate Danarius or Hadriana. Just watching him touch her would fan the flames of hatred in a way I knew I could never control.

It reminded me too much of the one night I had been allowed to touch her like that. The one night I had been touched by a mage and felt love instead of despair.

I began to consider leaving Kirkwall soon after. Though I had no idea where I would go, Danarius was dead and Hawke would be safe as the Champion. Perhaps if I removed myself from the situation, she could truly be free of the wounds I had inflicted.

And then that bastard blew up the chantry and there were no words in common, Qunlat, or Tevene that were enough with which to curse him.

* * *

"He wants to die. Kill him and be done with it."

* * *

The elf's words rang in my ears louder than even Aveline's or Sebastian's condemnations. Yes, he would want me dead, of course. He would be glad to have me out of the way, both as a mage and as the man Miranda loved. A surge of anger quite unlike Justice's righteous fury boiled in my gut. Did Fenris imagine that she would kill me at his command and he would take my place in her bed? Did he delude himself into believing she could ever trust him again?

It was then that it hit me that she would never trust me again, either. A wave of nausea hit me like a force spell. I blamed it on the smell of burning flesh.

A heartbeat later she spoke, and I didn't have to see Miranda's face to know there were tears in her eyes; I could hear them in her voice as she choked out, "Anders… just go."

For a moment, I thought she had thrust a dagger through my heart anyway, but those words pierced deeper than any blade.

Then Sebastian stepped forward, challenging her for my life. It was hardly surprising that the man who had suggested I be reported to the templars now stood against me, but I finally looked up to stare him down. His chest was puffed out, full of fury and vengeance, something I understood all too well. But his expression wasn't the one that unnerved me.

Just behind him, the elf was staring me down with a look fiercer than the one he had given his Tevinter master. I couldn't understand why his eyes suddenly cut through me so fiercely until I remembered the words he had spoken to me nearly a year before, the declaration that I had laughed off but which now rang in my ears: _Hurt her and I will kill you._

My eyes shot to Miranda, taking in how the grace and power of the Champion of Kirkwall were missing as she looked at Sebastian's chin instead of his eyes, and suddenly it struck me that the state she was in was my fault.

It took me a moment to realize that the brother was now threatening to gather the might of Starkhaven to march against Kirkwall if Miranda allowed me to live. He would do it too, I realized, just as he had paid us to avenge his family. Vengeance and Sebastian would be good friends if they weren't on opposing sides.

"I'm sure the Maker would justify the murders of thousands more innocents for your grudge," Miranda said, not sarcastically like I would have, but gently and reprovingly. Perhaps she had missed her true calling as a chantry sister herself.

"I will return with an army," Sebastian promised.

Miranda shook her head, and though she finally met his eyes, her voice sounded softer and sadder than I had ever heard it before. "But you will not return to find me. Kirkwall is not my home, Sebastian; you may have forgotten that, but I assure you I have not. You do not forget seeing your home burned and desecrated by a descending horde of darkspawn. You do not forget being forced to leave your baby sister to those monsters, knowing what they would do with her body. You do not forget having to give away your little brother to the Wardens to save him from that blighted taint in the Deep Roads and having nothing left of your mother to give a pyre but _her head_ , Sebastian. There is nothing left of my home now but what I carry in my heart. As long as Starkhaven still stands and your family's tomb lies undisturbed, I will not hear you preach to me about how entirely you have lost everything."

Sebastian turned a shade of red that nearly rivaled Miranda's hair. "Fine. Let the abomination go free. But I swear to you, I will find your precious Anders and teach him the true meaning of justice."

"He doesn't go free," Miranda whispered, looking over to me as she spoke, and my breath caught in my throat. Her eyes had always been the most brilliant shade of icy blue, but I had never seen anything but warmth in them until the moment she declared, "He goes with the knowledge that every drop of blood spilled here today is on his hands. Mage as well as templar. Child as well as soldier. Perhaps even mine as well as Meredith's. And he goes now so there is nothing he can do about it."

I tasted bile and tried not to gag on it. She wasn't gifting me my life; she was torturing me with the knowledge I might have cost her hers. It was a level of cruelty I hadn't thought she was capable of. I had feared she might send me away at the end of the day, but I had never imagined she would not let me stay long enough to protect her first.

Jealousy flared in my chest again, this time sharper and more painful. She had never sent the elf away, and he wasn't even a healer. But as I looked at Fenris again, I swore I could feel his hatred pierce through me. He wanted to kill me for what I had done, for hurting her instead of healing her as I had promised. The part of me that remembered how the Circle had made love nothing more than a fairy tale wanted him to do it rather than lose her, but the memories from before the bond with Justice had become more and more like someone else's. Miranda had been the last thing I could hold to that reminded me of who I had once been.

I would leave now, if she insisted, and my heart sank as the new chill in her eyes told me that she would. As soon as she spoke the words, something inside me froze.

I had thought it would hurt to have her throw my heart back at me, but I felt nothing at all. I didn't realize I was speaking until I had thanked her for my life and turned away. It was then that I noticed I wasn't moving my feet either.

_You are too weak for this,_ said the familiar voice in the back of my head. _I told you she would not understand. She was never caged like the others. But it is no matter. I will see us out of this place._

My step faltered only once as I steeled myself to argue, but then found I did not have the resolve. Why should I not let Justice take me away? Miranda would not have me stay and defend her. Miranda would not have _me_.

Justice pushed again and then I was walking toward the exit of Hightown, content for once to watch myself move like I was the spectator in my own body.

I was glad now I had never told her about this. If I had admitted Justice could still take this kind of control over me when my will was weak enough, she would never have let me out of her sight.

_Or perhaps she would have stuck a dagger between our ribs._

I tried not to think that it might have been better for her to kill me, to disassociate herself from what I had done, but of course there was no hiding it from Justice. I felt the pressure of his will like a claw closing around my chest and forcing me onward. I could have resisted, but what was the point? I had nothing left to fight for but my life, and Justice would see to that.

I hoped the spirit was right and that explosion had been the start of freedom for my fellow mages. I hoped it was worth losing everything I had ever wanted.  And more than anything, I hoped something kept Miranda Hawke safe through the battle I had incited.

No curse or torment would be enough to redeem me if she died because of me.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is somewhat of an exercise in POVs for me. I worked particularly hard to help keep the voices true to Fenris and Anders. Please let me know if anything broke that immersion for you! I want to work on that!


End file.
